We have been working in partnership with AXA for over 12 years. Following AXA’s merger with Guardian Royal Exchange we have helped AXA to align its property holdings with its corporate business strategy across its 1.2m sq ft operational property portfolio.

Providing portfolio transparency

At the heart of our advice is robust portfolio analysis. We set up a custom-built programme of centralised data capture, activity monitoring, financial modeling and reporting to enable the AXA team to make fast, informed decisions on asset disposals based on the impact of FRS12 (IAS 37) provisions for surplus property on the balance sheet.

Reducing occupational costs

We have implemented a disposal programme to reduce the size of AXA’s legacy portfolio. We have delivered FRS12 savings of £35m for AXA, having disposed of 191 leasehold properties that were surplus to requirements.

But our hard work has not stopped there. In acting for AXA as landlord in rent reviews we have agreed increases which are 20% above the budget forecast and for rent reviews where AXA are the occupational tenant, we have agreed rents that are on average 10-30% below the quoting levels. We have consistently outperformed benchmarks for rental settlements by 10-20%.

Minimising liabilities – dilapidations and business rates

We have successfully reduced liabilities such as dilapidation claims and business rates on behalf of AXA. We made savings of £4.5m by defending the landlord’s original dilapidation claims. Our business rates specialists have reduced AXA’s business rates bill by £1.7m against the 2005 Rating List and so far savings achieved against the 2010 list are £1.6m. Our analysis shows that AXA’s business rates costs are some 10-30% lower than their industry peers.

“In LSH, we have an excellent partner who has aggressively and successfully tackled the disposal of our legacy portfolio whilst supporting us with robust analysis”.
Rob Orton, Group Property Director, AXA UK

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